PhotographyWalking the perimeter of Mexico

JournalistFeikede Jong is the creator of the app Limits: On Foot Along the Edge of the Megalopolis of the Valley of Mexico. Walking the entire perimeter of one of the megacities of the 21st century, he captured the deepest hinterlands of the capital.

We all know how Mexico is big, looking its size on maps, but Feike de Jong wants us to perceive not only its vast size but the infinite complexity of the cityit encircles. "As the walk continued and the city stretched out before me, determining my route – zigzagging, capriciously climbing up hills, slithering through ravines, day after day, week after week – it began to acquire a personality. I imagined the city as a whale and myself some miniscule sea creature crawling over it: the city moving slowly and gracefully according to its own laws; me frantically scrambling, a water flea on the skin of the leviathan".

From Urbanistas, one of the most dangerous neighbourhoods in the Sierra de Guadalupe to the stones in Tecamac, passing through Colonia Federal with traditional flashy cars, you will experience the contraddictions of Mexico from the eye of a local. "Feeling constantly vulnerable and exposed after weeks wandering the urban landscape left me exhausted. I felt the presence of people very strongly, as if they were amplified. I became increasingly understanding towards vagrants for whom the distance to another human being – the actual approach and talking to them – seems enormous. Their presence as a kind of background hum of the city was pleasant and comforting. I talked to myself, and became a person who sits on a sidewalk in the dust without apparent purpose, munching on a packaged muffin".

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